This paper studies the history of bonded labor in the plantations of Sao Paulo. Brazilian farmers proposed various contracts to bond immigrant households with a credit-labor interlinkage. The aim is to discuss why different laborrental arrangements were adopted. In particular, vis-a-vis the alternatives of fixed rents and wage systems, it asks why sharecropping contracts were offered to European laborers during the transition from slavery in Brazil. Building on some new historical evidence and a formal model, the paper makes two propositions about the rationale of bonded labor and sharecropping. First, the credit dimension was more important to landowners than specific labor-rental regimes. The credit supplied by landowners allowed for the tying of immigrants via indebtedness. This mechanism guaranteed a secure and stable supply of labor to local agricultural elites and permitted the immigration of poor and credit-constrained Europeans. This prepared the insertion of Brazil into the global circuit of the Age of Mass Migration without promoting institutional reforms to attract non-bonded immigrants. Second, sharecropping became the most prevalent contract in the first phase of the transition from slavery not because of an economically rational decision taken by landowners, but more as an emulation of other historical and international experiences with this labor-rental arrangement.

The rationale of sharecropping: immigrant bonded laborers and the transition from slavery in Brazil (1830-1890)

n IBLIOGRAPHIES for the study of Brazilian history are either 9 too brief, such as those in the appendices of general textbooks, or too long, such as the Manual Bibliogrvfico de Estudos Brasileiros. The present one anns to strike a happy medium and, by doing so, to provide a practical guide for the increasing number of students and of the general public in the United States who have an interest in learning more about the Brazilian past.

A Working Bibliography for the Study of Brazilian History

Com o declinio da importância do trafico negreiro como fator de acumulacao de capital, o interesse pelo escravismo se desloca do âmbito do comercio para o da producao, passando o estimulo para preservar a ordem escravista a advir fundamentalmente do barateamento de custo propiciado pelo trabalho escravo .

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A destruição do escravismo capitalista

Tentaremos no presente trabalho relacionar a organizacao politico-partidaria do Imperio com o encaminhamento da questao escrava, focalizado, para exemplificacao, nos seus dois pri-meiros passos — a extincao do trafico e a libertacao do ventre escravo.

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Paula Beiguelman

Papers

A destruição do escravismo capitalista

Aspectos da organização político-partidária no Império Brasileiro